Let's imagine you have 562 tons of stuff that need shifting. Which haulage firm do you call? If you like a lorry with a retro green livery, you might opt for Eddie Stobart. But really, it’s up to you. That’s the good thing about capitalism.

Now let’s now imagine that your husband has beaten the crap out of you in front of your children for the 23rd time. You’ve finally summoned the courage to seek justice — but you only get one choice of lawyer. Weirdly, he comes from Eddie Stobart, the haulage company, which the Government has decided should run the legal aid system, for no other reason than it’s cheap and you’re poor. A two-tier justice system is a less good thing about capitalism.

Strange as it may seem, if Chris Grayling’s justice reforms come to pass — and there are no plans to discuss them in Parliament — then Stobart Justice could soon hold sway in Britain.

Under the proposed changes, a legal aid claimant will not be able to choose their lawyer on the basis of specialism or reputation. Nor will they be able to change lawyer. A new “competitive” tendering system will take away Government contracts from small firms and give them to a few corporate giants instead, who must prove that they will undercut the existing service by 17.5 per cent.

Even the Ministry of Justice admits that the changes will cause more than 1,000 small solicitors’ firms to go out of business. Bigger solicitors’ practices say the savings are impossible to meet. But Eddie Stobart, of all companies, is up for it and the lowest bidder wins.

No wonder lawyers are fleeing the criminal bar. “I have jumped ship while I still have the chance, leaving the more ideologically-minded or stubborn to do the job I was once very proud to do,” reports one. “Every other criminal barrister I know is planning to do the same if the reforms are passed.” Contrary to popular belief, criminal work is characterised by long, lonely hours (4am starts are common), surprisingly low pay (often below minimum wage, once expenses and travel are taken into account) and cases that would make most of us despair of humanity.

If this doesn’t tally with the image of “fat-cat” barristers that Grayling is keen to promote, he has clearly learned lessons from his Cabinet colleagues. Jeremy Hunt seems to regard undermining trust in GPs as his main purpose as Health Secretary; Michael Gove does the same with teachers. Once self-interest and inefficiency have been firmly established, professionals can easily be replaced with soldiers or lorries, or whatever really. As long as the minister can claim he is providing “value for money” to taxpayers.

In this case, the saving will be £220 million per year. A pretty paltry sum, when the cost is a justice system that works for all.

The dating game is not for everyone

Oona Chaplin, star of the new Channel Four TV series Dates, surprised the world yesterday by revealing that she herself had never been on one. “What does that mean?!” squealed BBC Breakfast’s Susannah Reid. “Does it mean you’ve had relationships but not actually … erm … dated?!”

“It’s that weird thing,” explained Chaplin. “I basically decide whether I fancy someone before I end up having dinner alone with them.”

Why is that weird? I only ever went on one “date” myself, with a minor children’s TV star in an Enfield branch of Café Rouge when I was 14. After that, realising that this is Britain and not an episode of Saved By the Bell, I found my romantic needs were just about served by drinking, sidling and lunging, or at least the befriending method that Chaplin describes.

What is really weird is how firmly the ultra-formal, Jane Austen-style American system has taken hold since then. It’s just not cricket.

Girl power in a boardroom

Angela Ahrendts, the chief executive of Burberry, has become the first woman ever to top the corporate pay “league” with her £17 million salary. According to the latest figures, this marks a wider trend in Britain’s boardrooms.

Although there are far fewer female CEOs, their pay packages are around a third higher than their male counterparts. It’s enough to put a feminist in a quandary.

Should one cheer this very visible manifestation of “Girl Power”?

Or would it be churlish to point out that £17 million is approximately 700 times the average female salary, and ask how Ahrendts’s inordinate rewards help anyone but herself?

I could murder a good laugh

Midway through the first episode of the French supernatural drama The Returned, a woman was attacked in an underpass and stabbed in the stomach. It was pure class. The soundtrack emphasised every sching of the blade, every squelch of an internal organ. As with the massacres in Game of Thrones, the strangulation scenes in The Fall or the ocular torture in Utopia, the sudden act of violence served as a marker that this was quality misery TV. Other tropes include a dead child, a slowly collapsing marriage, an isolated rural community, subtitles and Olivia Colman, who is shortly to follow up the bleak Broadchurch with the even bleaker-looking Run.

In a certain mood, I’m a sucker for this. At the weekend, I hatched a plan to return to one of the key sources, the 32-hour German drama, Heimat. The beginning was so promising — washed-out colours, bleak village — but thanks to a faulty DVD player, we couldn’t get the subtitles to work, so we watched Curb Your Enthusiasm instead.